Karen Kovaka's blog is called Rhetorical Response and appears to have nothing to do with film at all. It does, however, have a lot to do with literature and she has posted her thoughts on the classic poem Beowulf.
I stumbled on Seamus Heaney's translation a few years ago and it was one of the few books I carried to the other side of the world when my family went to Thailand to do missions work. It's a magnificent story, intertwined with both Christian and pagan imagery, heroic and engaging.
Karen's look at Beowulf is done with the aim of examining the underlying worldview of the epic, but there are a few things that we as filmmakers can learn as we prepare our own stories to be shown to a post-modern audience. I particularly appreciate Part 3: Evil and Goodness in Beowulf, which closes with this note and a challenge for us to emulate:
"What does Beowulf accomplish by successfully synthesizing two rival conceptions of evil without compromising the truth? The work is a masterpiece of diplomacy. In a culture beginning to accept Christianity but still clinging to its pagan roots, the poemÂ’s author fed his audience a Christian message (perhaps unconsciously) without threatening their cultural moorings. That he did this without weakening the truth of Christianity is impressive indeed."
Rhetorical Response - Beowulf
